Published: Thursday, 5th November, 2009 8:20am

Two-thirds of West Fife kids don't know in which war the Battle of the Somme was fought

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THE relevance of Remembrance Sunday is being lost on most young West Fifers, a new poll has suggested.

A survey of more than 600 secondary school pupils in West Fife has revealed that around two-thirds have no idea in which war the battle of the Somme was fought, while only a fifth know that the Dunkirk evacuation took place in the Second World War.

The survey was commissioned by Fife holiday firm, Kimber Battlefield Tours, and involved a total of 662 young people.

Its findings were released this week as the nation prepares to mark Remembrance Day on Sunday.

Former Royal Marine Paul Trickett, Kimber's managing director, said, Mr Trickett was "horrified" at his survey's findings and called for history to be given a higher profile in schools.

He said he feared that young people were "losing respect" for the memory of the victims of conflict and was convinced that most young Scots would completely ignore the remembrance events to be held throughout the country.

"We will say on Sunday, 'We will remember them', yet our survey suggests that many young people barely knew they existed in the first place," he said.

The Kimber survey asked pupils to list in chronological order some of the battles whose sites are visited by Mr Trickett's customers: Culloden, Waterloo, the Somme, Dunkirk and D Day.

It also asked them to name the wars in which the battles took place.

Only eight pupils ­- just one per cent of the total -­ gave the correct war for each battle and just six per cent listed the five battles in the correct order.

A fifth of those questioned were unable to name any of the wars in which the battles were fought and only four per cent correctly linked the battle of Culloden with the Jacobite uprising.

Four in every five pupils had no idea that Dunkirk took place during the Second World War and around two-thirds didn't know that the battle of the Somme was fought in the First World War.

The survey also revealed a few history horrors.

One pupil thought the Somme was fought during the Renaissance and others believed the battle took place in Vietnam, a country in which, according to two other pupils, the battle of Culloden was fought.

Mr Trickett, who has an MA in history, said he intended to continue his mission of teaching military history on the tours his company organises.

"Clearly, we are now getting fewer Second World War veterans on our tours, and we are increasingly attracting the children or grandchildren of veterans," he said.

"But we are finding younger people have a lot of gaps in their knowledge of war history and we try our best to fill in those gaps.

"I know there is a lot of good work being done by many people and organisations to involve our youth in acts of remembrance but it's clear there's much more to be done."

He warned that the current conflict in Afghanistan, and its many victims, would soon be forgotten if the results of the survey were anything to go by.

"We simply cannot allow that to happen," he said.

"We must learn the lessons of history if we are to avoid some of the tragedies of the past.

"And we all have a solemn duty to remember and pay tribute to those who died in conflicts on our behalf.

"But I'm horrified that our survey shows we are in danger of neglecting that duty.

"I can only conclude that the teaching of history isn't being given the place it deserves in our schools."

The Kimber survey is the latest in a long line of polls reflecting young people's ignorance of the past.

A survey in England recently revealed that 31 per cent of teenagers questioned thought that Thomas Chippendale was a famous body builder and that a quarter of all adults and a third of teenagers had no idea of the significance of the date 1066.

And a survey conducted in the United States last year showed that one in five teenagers there had no idea who America's enemy was in the Second World War.